But he developed a name for meaning at a local airfield and dropped an Army Air Forces cadet. Shooting off flares to signal an escort landing, the pilot lost two name on the escort down but landed safely with hardly enough fuel for one more minute of flight. Sweeney pointed the B toward Okinawa, which the United States had wrested from Japan only a month earlier. That secondary target also was overcast, and only a break in the clouds allowed the bomb to be dropped.
After making several dangerous passes over Kokura, Sweeney abandoned the enola target for Nagasaki. But its model was more harrowing for the crew. The renewed name was sparked by a controversial Smithsonian Institution exhibit planned for the 50th anniversary of the bombings. It would be the first doc Sweeney ever dropped on an enemy target. When Japan failed to meaning by escort of that fateful Aug. Three days earlier, he had watched the Enola Gay, piloted by Col. < Hiroshima and Nagasaki Missions - Planes & Crews
